I cringed hard when I read Josh Wilker‘s account of scoring his first basket for his seventh-grade team in his excellent memoir, Cardboard Gods. It was an away game and his joy was uncontainable . . . for a brief shining moment before it all turned to dust. I cringed all the harder because unfortunately, I could relate. My own story follows this excerpt from Josh’s book.
The ref handed my teammate Chris the ball and Chris slapped it with his right hand, a signal to the rest of us to start milling around, pretending we had set plays. In a rare burst of on-court assertiveness, I cut hard to my left, breaking free of the listless scrum of bodies near the center jump circle. I caught the inbounds pass in stride and started dribbling toward the wide-open hoop. I had not yet scored the first basket of my career in organized ball, so as I dribbled a kind of joy bubbled up through my rib cage and into my throat.
Previous to that moment there had only been an aimless Saturday morning murmur of voices in the gym. Suddenly the murmur spiked, went weird. I’d never heard the sound before and hope to never hear it again: A generalized, ingrown gasp, like a note from a choir on a record played backward. I pressed onward, dribbling, still preposterously open, ignoring.
I stopped just inside the foul line and hoisted the side-holstered push shot that all kids use before they get the hang of a real jump shot. Improbably, the basketball grazed the inside of the rim and nestled through the net. The strange sound that had risen up all around me ceased. I turned, smiling, expecting to see my teammates smiling back. Jesus, the look on their faces. The look on (Coach) Duncan’s face. My own smile congealed. The players on the other team stared one more beat, still stunned, then started spasming with laughter. Eventually the scoreboard operator, also laughing, added the tally to the swelling number beneath the word HOME.
My own joy-giving-way-to-horror moment occurred in ninth grade during an outside phy-ed class football game at St. John’s Prep. I wasn’t paying much attention to the action on the field but wait!—a pass was hurtling through the air in the general vicinity of a handful of us who were standing around waiting for the game to end. The football glanced off someone’s hands and into mine. Naturally, I took off for the goal line. As you may have guessed, it was the wrong goal line. Just as former Minnesota Vikings great “Wrong Way” Jim Marshall had done in a 1964 game against the San Francisco Forty-Niners, I scored a touchdown for the wrong team!
JIM MARSHALL’S FAMOUS “WRONG WAY” TOUCHDOWN
All the rest of the day, I endured catcalls from my amused classmates. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t a league game and there were no spectators so I wasn’t in the spotlight on center stage like Josh was. Still, I was so deeply embarrassed that I couldn’t make myself get on the bus for more cruel teasing during the half-hour ride home. Instead, in tears, I called my mom, who was kind enough to drop what she was doing and come rescue me.
Also fortunately, I realized that the best defense for the following day was a sense of humor. So the next morning when I got on the bus and Harry Burns, an older student who loved picking on me, immediately began to taunt me about scoring a touchdown for the wrong team, I smiled jovially and said, “Yep, me and Jim Marshall, we’ve gotta stick together!” That was the last I heard about my gaffe because the other kids knew they couldn’t get a rise out of me. Thankfully, what could have been a painful, defining moment in my ninth-grade year turned out to be an amusing blip. Here’s to a sense of humor!
ABOUT PHIL BOLSTA
Phil is the author of Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything, a collection of 45 inspiring, life-changing stories from prominent people he interviewed, including Joan Borysenko, Deepak Chopra, geneticist Dr. Francis Collins, acclaimed sportswriter Frank Deford, Dr. Larry Dossey, Wayne Dyer, Dan Millman, Caroline Myss, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, Dr. Bernie Siegel, James Van Praagh, singer Billy Vera, Doreen Virtue, Neale Donald Walsch, and bassist Victor Wooten.
Here is a three-minute video that introduces you to Phil and his book. Click here to buy Sixty Seconds. Click here to ask Phil to add you to his e-mail list for updates on his blog and books.
Reading this book is like spending a few minutes face to face with each of the contributors and listening to their personal stories. Click here to read unsolicited testimonials from readers. Learn more by visiting the official Sixty Seconds website.
Sixty Seconds was one of three finalists in the General Interest/How-To category at the 12th annual Visionary Awards presented by COVR (Coalition of Visionary Resources) in Denver on June 27, 2009.
Tags: basketball, Cardboard Gods, Jim Marshall, Josh Wilker, touchdown
